“Thank God he’s leaving is my initial reaction,” Gowdy said. “My second reaction is I did not know Mormons used drugs, and anyone who is capable of sending out that press release has to be under the influence of something. The person responsible for this fact pattern is Secretary Clinton. Jim Comey did not tell her to use her private server. He did not say to mislead the public about whether or not you turned over all of your work emails.”

Mormons abstain from drugs, tobacco, and alcohol.

In July, Reid praised Comey as a man of unquestionable integrity and competence. That comment came after Comey announced the agency would not recommend charges against Clinton for her private email server use, although he called her handling of classified material “extremely careless.” In addition, Comey debunked Clinton’s repeated claim that she never sent nor received classified material on her email.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/beastmode-gowdy-roasts-reid-for-letter-to-comey-know-mormons-drugs/feed/0Gowdy Smacks Down MSNBC Attempt to Distract From Clinton With Russia Questionhttp://freebeacon.com/politics/gowdy-smacks-msnbc-attempt-distract-clinton-russia-question/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/gowdy-smacks-msnbc-attempt-distract-clinton-russia-question/#respondMon, 31 Oct 2016 15:09:46 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=682705The post Gowdy Smacks Down MSNBC Attempt to Distract From Clinton With Russia Question appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) brushed away an MSNBC question Monday about whether Russian interference in U.S. elections was more significant than Hillary Clinton’s ongoing email scandal, saying both of them were serious issues for the country.

Gowdy is the chair of the House Benghazi Committee, whose probe led to the discovery of Clinton’s private email server use at the State Department. He came on Morning Joe to discuss the FBI’s announcement that it is looking into newly discovered emails as part of a reopened probe into Clinton’s email practices.

Liberal columnist Mike Barnicle asked if the documented Russian interference in the U.S. elections was a more serious matter to him than Clinton’s email scandal. Barnicle, like other left-leaning members of the media, has oftendownplayed the Clinton scandal during his frequent Morning Joe appearances.

“There are several elements going on in this campaign, obviously, many of them upsetting to millions and millions of voters,” Barnicle said. “But one of the things that goes unspoken in large extent is Russian interference in the American political process. Would you care to rank, in terms of priority, Hillary Clinton’s emails versus the clearly established Russian interference in our electoral process? Which is more important?”

After making sure he heard the question clearly, Gowdy said, “Is it an option that they’re both important, or do I have to pick between the two?”

“Well, you can do whatever you choose to do, obviously, but I mean, which concerns you more?” Barnicle asked.

“Both,” Gowdy said. “I don’t think I have to pick between the two. I think foreign interference in our election is terrible, and I think mishandling classified information is terrible … They’re both important, they both ought to be looked into, and it’s not up to me which is more deleterious to our republic.”

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/gowdy-smacks-msnbc-attempt-distract-clinton-russia-question/feed/0Fox: Clinton Camp Was Worried About Emails Between Hillary and Obama After Server Scandal Brokehttp://freebeacon.com/politics/ed-henry-reports-podesta-email-involving-president-obama-day-after-subpoena/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/ed-henry-reports-podesta-email-involving-president-obama-day-after-subpoena/#respondFri, 14 Oct 2016 16:16:46 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=675163The post Fox: Clinton Camp Was Worried About Emails Between Hillary and Obama After Server Scandal Broke appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Fox News’ Ed Henry reported Friday on newly released emails from WikiLeaks that showed President Obama may have known more about Hillary Clinton’s private email server than was initially known by the public.

This is part of the weeklong release of emails that belonged to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta after they were hacked.

“It’s an email that might draw President Obama deeper into this controversy than he has been before,” Henry said. “Remember, the president has previously said that he was unaware that Hillary Clinton had a private server, number one, and that they emailed one another infrequently.”

Henry went on to read an email from Podesta to Cheryl Mills on March 4, 2015: “Think we should hold emails to and from POTUS? That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but it seems like they will.”

Henry went on to say that this was significant partly because Obama has downplayed any emails he had with Clinton and that this email from Podesta to Mills was written the day after Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) issued a subpoena ordering Clinton to preserve all of her emails, but that Podesta and Mills debated on what do with those emails, even though Gowdy issued a legal order on the matter. Then on March 20, 2015, as Gowdy demanded Clinton to turn over her server, Podesta requested a phone call with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.

“What was happening on March 20, 2015?” Henry said. “We went back and looked at the news reports. Trey Gowdy had another big step. He was demanding that Hillary Clinton’s server be turned over.”

“And one last email that we got yesterday to put all this together, John Podesta on that same March 20, 2015, as Trey Gowdy was demanding the server, sent an email to the White house Chief of Staff Denis McDonough,” Henry reported. “We have that email as well, saying, ‘Do you have time for a call? Can you speak by phone?’ They didn’t put anything else in writing. We don’t know what else happened.

“But as all this was playing out, why was John Podesta reaching out to the White House Chief of Staff on March 20, 2015? Well, we got another email saying a couple weeks before that, March 4, 2015, he and Cheryl Mills were concerned about the emails between Hillary Clinton and the President.”

“This is Prosecutor 101. You don’t give immunity to the person who actually robbed the bank,” Gowdy said. “You may want to give it to the getaway driver. You may want to give it to the person who helped them count the money afterwards, but you don’t give immunity to the person who walked in and robbed the bank. That ain’t that complicated, but that’s apparently what the FBI did.”

Computer specialist Paul Combetta received immunity from the Justice Department during its investigation into Clinton’s private email server, the New York Timesreported Thursday. Combetta, an employee of Platte River Networks, used a program called BleachBit to permanently delete messages from Clinton’s server, just weeks after her server use came to light in March 2015.

Gowdy, the Benghazi Select Committee chairman and a career prosecutor, wanted to know what sort of immunity Combetta received.

“If the FBI and the Department of Justice gave this witness transactional immunity, it is tantamount to giving the triggerman immunity in a robbery case,” Gowdy said. “It looks like they gave immunity to the very person you would most want to prosecute, which is the person who destroyed official public records after there was a subpoena and after there was a preservation order.”

Combetta initially told investigators he did not remember deleting any messages, but then said he remembered he had not followed earlier instructions from Clinton’s attorneys to do so and did not mean to violate a subpoena. The Washington Post summed up the timeline:

On March 2, 2015, the New York Times revealed that Clinton used a personal email account as secretary of state, and the following day, the Benghazi committee requested documents related to it be preserved. On March 25, Platte River, which then managed Clinton’s private server, had a conference call with staffers of former president Bill Clinton, according to the summary. (A private server in the Clintons’ home was initially set up to be used by the former president and his staff.)

The Platte River employee told FBI agents that sometime in the week that followed, he realized he had not made the changes Mills requested months earlier–though he gave varying stories as to what happened next. The employee first said he did not recall making deletions based upon his realization, but in a later interview said he had an “Oh, s—” moment and deleted a Hillary Clinton email archive using a program called BleachBit, which is designed to prevent recovery.

The “devil is in the chronology,” Gowdy said, adding that Combetta’s story did not hold up to scrutiny.

“That defies logic why some techie in Colorado would, despite a subpoena, despite a preservation order, but after a conference call with David Kendall and Cheryl Mills, decide on his own that he is going to destroy public records, and then you grant this person immunity,” he said. “We need to ask the FBI what kind of immunity did you give, and why did you give it to the triggerman? Why did you give it to the person who actually destroyed government documents?”

Gowdy went on to criticize FBI Director James Comey’s decision to not recommend charges against Clinton, in spite of saying she was “extremely careless” with classified information, saying that her intent was clear from the evidence.

“Part of the way you prove criminal intent is the destruction of evidence, the consciousness of guilt, the multiple false explanations for why you did something, which are legion in this case from Secretary Clinton and others,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said after being asked about it by a reporter on her plane. “That was not something that I was aware of, and I think that the facts point out that there was no connection. It wasn’t something that, as far as I understand, that was related.”

House Benghazi Select Committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) said last month on Fox News that Clinton’s team used Bleachbit as a means to delete emails to where “even God can’t read them.“ Clinton claimed repeatedly she turned over all work-related emails to the State Department and only deleted emails of a personal nature, but the FBI discovered thousands of work-related emails she failed to turn over during its investigation of her server.

The FBI also learned that a Clinton aide used Bleachbit to wipe her server just three weeks after the New York Times broke the story in March 2015 about Clinton’s use of the private system.

FBI Director James Comey did not recommend charges against her but did state she had been “extremely careless” with classified material.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-i-dont-know-anything-about-bleachbit/feed/0Gowdy Lays Out What Answers Clinton Hasn’t Given on Private Email, Deletion Practiceshttp://freebeacon.com/politics/gowdy-lays-out-answers-clinton-private-email-deletion-practices/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/gowdy-lays-out-answers-clinton-private-email-deletion-practices/#respondThu, 25 Aug 2016 15:47:15 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=652081The post Gowdy Lays Out What Answers Clinton Hasn’t Given on Private Email, Deletion Practices appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) laid out Thursday on America’s Newsroom which questions he said Hillary Clinton has failed to answer about her private email server and deletion practices.

Gowdy, a House Oversight Committee member, said he did not see questions about Clinton’s intent in the FBI report on the bureau’s interview with her. While FBI Director James Comey said Clinton was “extremely careless“ with emails, he did not recommend prosecution largely because she did not seem to have intent to commit wrongdoing.

“I didn’t see any questions on that,” Gowdy said. “She said she did it it for convenience, but I didn’t see the follow-up questions in the interview I read.”

Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked Gowdy, a career prosecutor, what questions he would have asked during the FBI interview of Clinton.

“The direct evidence would be, Madam Secretary, why did you set up this email server this way? Why did you not take a state-dot-gov email address?” Gowdy asked. “And her response was, and it always has been, convenience. And then that’s when you press and say, well, what could be more convenient than just doing a state-dot-gov email address?”

The “labyrinthine” efforts she used to have a home-brewed server were actually inconvenient, Gowdy said.

“I would then ask, why did you delete emails that you kept for a year and a half? Keep in mind these personal emails, she didn’t bother to delete them for a year and a half,” Gowdy said. “It was the fall of 2014, a year and a half after she left the State Department, that she decided to start deleting emails. Why didn’t you delete them the month you left? Why didn’t you delete them six months after you left? And the other question they should have asked her is, Madam Secretary, why didn’t you turn your emails over the day you left service? Why did you hold onto them for almost two years?”

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/gowdy-lays-out-answers-clinton-private-email-deletion-practices/feed/0Gowdy: Lynch Wasted Our Time By Not Answering Questionshttp://freebeacon.com/politics/lynch-wasted-time-not-answering-questions/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/lynch-wasted-time-not-answering-questions/#respondWed, 13 Jul 2016 15:05:13 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=632602The post Gowdy: Lynch Wasted Our Time By Not Answering Questions appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) slammed Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday for avoiding multiple questions at a congressional hearing about the Justice Department’s decision not to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified material over her private email server.

Lynch sat in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that lasted over five hours and continuously did not answer questions that lawmakers asked her about the Clinton investigation.

“Again, I would refer you to [FBI] Director [James] Comey for any further explanation as to the basis for his recommendation,” Lynch said, referring to the FBI’s decision not to recommend the Justice Department prosecute Clinton.

Fox News host Bill Hemmer asked Gowdy what he learned at the hearing.

“Nothing,” he said, adding that it was a “total waste of time” and a “total disservice to my fellow citizens.”

Gowdy said it is not out of the ordinary to ask prosecutors to explain their decisions and Lynch legally could have done that, but simply chose not to.

“It’s not asking too much to ask prosecutors to explain their charging decisions or their decision not to charge,” he said. “She could have answered every one of those questions. She just chose not to. There is no legal prohibition, there is no grand jury prohibiton, no rule that doesn’t allow her to answer the questions. She just chose not to.”

“Why?” Hemmer asked.

Gowdy said that all the Judiciary Committee asked Lynch to do was take the facts of the case and apply them to the subsequent law.

“But the facts are embarrassing for her presidential candidate,” he said. “So, discussing the facts necessarily leads to more questions, like if you have all those good facts, why didn’t you indict? She doesn’t do well in that conversation.”

Hemmer asked if Gowdy was implying that Lynch was protecting Hillary Clinton.

“That is the only reasonable interpretation of what we witnessed yesterday,” Gowdy said. “There is no other reason for a detactched, nuetral attorney general not to say, ‘This is the law. These are the facts. We applied them and this is the result we got.’”

He explained that even though he did not agree with Comey’s conclusion to the investigation, he at least deserved credit for giving an analysis of the facts of the case.

Hemmer then asked what Gowdy thought of the private meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton on her plance in Arizona days before the FBI announced it would not recommend charges.

Gowdy said that in cases like these, with powerful people clearly doing something wrong but still avoiding punishment, he understands why the public thinks that there is a ‘two-tiered’ system in place.

“Poor folk don’t get to sit on the tarmac on a plane, or the spouses of poor folk don’t get to sit on the plane with the attorney general for 30 minutes,” Gowdy said. “But, if you are powerful and have a position of influence and you have the right last name, then you can do things the rest of the world can’t do, and that’s why people don’t have confidence in the justice system and it is not a political issue to me.”

“I spent sixteen years talking to people who never once wanted to discuss politics,” Gowdy continued. “It’s facts; it’s law; it’s justice. And she turned all of that upside down. It was a completely unforced error. I don’t know what they talked about. But, the appearance is dreadful.”

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/lynch-wasted-time-not-answering-questions/feed/0Lynch: Government Business Should Be Conducted on Government Emailhttp://freebeacon.com/politics/lynch-government-business-should-conducted-government-email/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/lynch-government-business-should-conducted-government-email/#respondTue, 12 Jul 2016 18:23:58 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=632119The post Lynch: Government Business Should Be Conducted on Government Email appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that it is important for official government business to be done on official government email accounts.

Committee member Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) said that there appears to be a two-tier justice system in the United States, referencing the controversial decision by the Justice Department not to indict Hillary Clinton for her private email server at the State Department, while past similar cases have led to criminal charges.

“It frankly should not matter whether you are running for president or running late to a kid’s ball game,” Gowdy said. “The same rules ought to apply to everyone.”

Gowdy followed his statement by asking Lynch why it is important to use official email accounts for official business.

“I believe it’s important to do that,” Lynch said. “I think that certainly every department has chosen to craft the way in which they carry out their business and it provides for a way of doing business in a secure system.”

Gowdy then asked Lynch if she uses an official email account to conduct her official business. Lynch said that she does use her official email account for government purposes.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/lynch-government-business-should-conducted-government-email/feed/0Clinton Still Doesn’t Believe She Sent Or Received Classified Info Despite Comey Statementshttp://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-still-doesnt-believe-she-sent-received-classified-info/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-still-doesnt-believe-she-sent-received-classified-info/#respondFri, 08 Jul 2016 23:06:26 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=630883The post Clinton Still Doesn’t Believe She Sent Or Received Classified Info Despite Comey Statements appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>Hillary Clinton still denied in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday that she ever sent or received classified information on her private email server, despite FBI Director James Comey’s recent statements to the contrary.

Blitzer pointed out that Comey did say there were 110 emails that contained classified information on her server.

“But, the FBI director did say about 110 emails were classified, various forms of classification,” Blitzer said. “Even if they had not been marked, he said someone in your position as Secretary of State should have known better. Here is the question– should you have known better?”

Clinton did not give a straight answer and shifted the focus to the people she was communicating with over email. She said that since they did not think the information was classified, she had no reason to believe it was.

“I just believe that the material that was being communicated by professionals, many with years of handling sensitive classified material, they did not believe that it was,” Clinton said. “I did not have a basis for second guessing their conclusion.”

Clinton defended her email practices, echoing past statements she has made on the issue.

“These were not marked,” Clinton said. “They were not marked and in retrospect some have said, ‘well, they should have been,’ but they were not at the time.”

Comey disputed these claims in his testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) directly asked Comey during the hearing if any of the emails on Clinton’s server were marked classified.

“Secretary Clinton said there was not anything marked,” Gowdy said.

“That’s not true,” Comey said. “There were a small number of portion markings on, I think, three of the documents.”

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-still-doesnt-believe-she-sent-received-classified-info/feed/0Comey: Asking Clinton Why She Told Congress and FBI Different Stories Could Have Established Intenthttp://freebeacon.com/politics/comey-clinton-congress-fbi-different-stories-established-intent/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/comey-clinton-congress-fbi-different-stories-established-intent/#respondThu, 07 Jul 2016 18:22:03 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=629980The post Comey: Asking Clinton Why She Told Congress and FBI Different Stories Could Have Established Intent appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
]]>FBI Director James Comey acknowledged Thursday that asking Hillary Clinton why she told the FBI and Congress differing stories about her private email server would have been helpful in establishing criminal intent.

Comey said Tuesday that he would not recommend charges because the agency could not prove Clinton had criminal intent with regard to mishandling of classified material.

At the outset of his questioning, Rep. Mick Mulvaney pointed out the exchange Comey had earlier with his colleague Rep Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) about the litany of statements Clinton made regarding her email server that were untrue. This included testifying before Congress last October that she did not send or receive email marked classified on her private email.

“When she met with you folks on Saturday last week, I take it she didn’t say the same things at that interview?” Mulvaney asked.

“I’m not equipped sitting here without the 302 in front of me … We do not have a basis for concluding that she lied to the FBI,” Comey said.

“Gotcha. Did anybody ask her on Saturday why she told ya’ll one thing and told us another?” Mulvaney asked.

“I don’t know as I sit here … I’ll figure that out,” Comey said.

“Would that have been of interest to you in helping to establish intent?” Mulvaney asked.